Lecture 4. Loneliness

Question 1

Krau et. al 1998 investigated the Internet Paradox. What was the idea of the internet paradox? And why was this paradoxical? And time displacement?

Answer 1

The more time you spend on the Internet, the less time you spend with your friends. There was a negative effect: you will spend less times with your strong ties. Your strong ties weren’t on the Internet.

Paradoxical: the more you use this communicate medium the less social you will become. You take away time you normally spend with your strong ties, and place it into communication with weak ties.

Question 2

What were the consequences according to Krau te al. 199* ?

Answer 2

macro: social disengagement leads to worse schools, more crime, less responsible politicians.
micro: impoverished wellbeing, social involvement. - loneliness etc.

Question 3

How was the study set up from Krau et all? and what was the outcome?

Answer 3

It was a longitudinal study, with three meeting points.
T1: how people were without computers.
T2: they gave people computers and how they used them - locked internet use. They wanted to predict their internet outcomes with T1.
T3: post measure on the outcomes.

OVERALL there is a negative impact of using Internet on your social wellbeing, but hese effects are very small.

Question 4

Walther 1996, Hyper personal communication. What does this mean?

Answer 4

The Internet reduced cues

1. increased anonymity - improved self-disclosure
2. asynchornous communication - idealized self- presentation
3. gaps are creatively compensated - emoticons
4. information gaps are completed in fantasy - idealized picture of each other

Question 5

McKenna et al. and Bargh et al. found evidence for Walthers research; computer mediated is better than face2face.

Answer 5

1. liking: people started to like each other more online
2. true self: people were better able to express their true selfs online
3. projection: they tended to project more qualities of and idealized friend onto interaction partner.

Question 6

The internet paradox was reversed. What did they found?

Answer 6

The more internet, the bigger your social circle.

The more you use internet, the more they were engaged in face2face communication at time 2.

Question 7

INternet enhance self-disclosure hypothesis?

Answer 7

the more you communicate online the more you online self disclose, the more you disclose online the strong your ties will become, this will have an effect on your personal wellbeing